I have now ranked the top 100 MLB prospects and all 30 MLB farm systems heading into the 2024 season along with taking a deeper dive into the best prospects on every National League team earlier this week. Now it is time to wrap up by ranking the top prospects on every American League team.
A quick refresher on a key term you'll see throughout the team lists: future value, shortened to FV hereafter, sums up the value of a player into one number. It's graded on the 20-80 scouting scale. A low-end everyday player is a 50, which correlates to 2.0 WAR; a well-above-average position player, No. 3 starter or high-end closer is a 60, or somewhere around 3.0 WAR. I refrain from tossing out an 80 on minor leaguers because that would imply one is expected to be one of the top players in baseball. FV also scales to trade value, so a 50 FV in the low minors has a wide range of potential outcomes but has trade value similar to a big-league-ready everyday player with lower upside.
While the Top 100 is exactly that long, I rank every prospect who gets a 45 or better FV grade, so that rank is included here in the team lists. For every team, there are reports on the top 10 prospects and then varying numbers of others depending on the strength of the system. Broadly, it'll be everyone better than a 40 FV, then handpicked interesting prospects who are 40 FVs. For reference, a 40 FV is what I'd term a "common" prospect in old-school baseball card parlance. A 40 FV prospect is not without value but every organization has and has access to (players drafted in Rounds 3 through 5 of the draft are basically all 40 FVs right when they sign) many of these players every year.
This year, I've left off the 35-plus FV tier from the rankings, as there were a number of these fringe prospects on each team, but they rarely matter in the season in which I rank them in that tier, so I chose to focus my time and words on the better prospects. For farm rankings continuity, I still ranked players in this tier.
Now on to my 2024 AL rankings.
Jump to a franchise:
AL East: BAL | BOS | NYY | TB| TOR
AL Central: CHW | CLE | DET | KC | MIN
AL West: HOU | LAA | OAK | SEA | TEX